Parting For Sure

Back a couple days ago when I said I’d made another decision regarding Chael? Well, it’s still raw but I can talk about it now: After the divorce we’re parting ways. He’s not getting any more chances regarding coming with me to NYC or otherwise being a fixture in my life.

Everything past and present has been a lie. He can’t remember any time, besides Pixel’s death, that he’s genuinely felt bad about anything regarding someone else in the entire time I’ve known him. He doesn’t care that I’m divorcing him or that I’m dropping him out of my life and not taking him to NYC.

In fact, he expresses feeling “liberated” by my divorcing him because he doesn’t have to “play the complex role” of being my husband (i.e. pretending to care how my day was, wanting to hold hands with me, caring if I was crying or mad about something, etc). He’d like to go on serving me as that was a “simpler role” for him to fake (and he admits it, like the marriage, would be him faking all the time and not showing any genuine emotion for me).

He cannot feel empathy. He has no interest in other people. He doesn’t care about them coming into or leaving his life.

To, of course, include me.

Those are basically what the total and constant lying come down to: he doesn’t know how to be a real person. He’s not even sure if he *has* a real personality because all he can think to do is pretend one for others. As I mentioned before, it’s not just his words… it’s his whole body, his facial expressions. He lies like that without even thinking about it, it’s automatic.

He basically just functions by social cues. He knows he *should* feel sad in X situation, so that’s how he reacts: as though he’s sad. He knows he *should* be interested in what you did today, so that’s how he reacts: he asks you how your day was. He knows he *should* care that you could die due to something, so that’s how he reacts: as though he’s concerned.

But none of these reactions are real. Chael says he never feels any interest in others or feelings about their feelings other than making them happy makes him happy.

That doesn’t sound too bad, right? That’s a positive and warm trait in someone that is usually a really sweet thing.

No. Because on further explaining from him it’s not about happiness in someone else feeling good, it’s about manipulating them into thinking well of him so that he gets what he wants from them and that when people are happy around him his life is easier.

What a nightmare.

And no, this isn’t a case of “she’s assuming” or “this is her impression”. This is “these are directly things he’s said to her”.

For 16 years he would randomly grab me, twirl me around, dance with me, and hug me in a grocery store without my ever stating I wanted this… something he started out of the blue when we were dating, something he always did spontaneously without my prompting… and it was him playing me. It was fake, a role he admits playing, he never did it out of love. It was always an act to make me *think* he wanted to do that to me because he loved me and was that kind of person. It would get me to stick around and I’m nice to him.

That last line is the summary of everything he’s ever done nice for me in our relationship: it would get me to stick around and I’m nice to him.

He expresses he wouldn’t mind if I died tomorrow. He wouldn’t be at all upset.

He’s happy to have been found out and not have to pretend to all the nice things he used to pretend to. He expresses it’s a “great weight off him”.

I was madly in love with a romantic, kind, frustrating, annoying, interesting, man who never existed.